The men looked as if they had heard the suggestion and heartily approved of it.
The next evening Ella was fortunate enough to get beside Herbert once again—she had scarcely had an opportunity of exchanging a word with him all day. He had been with Phyllis alone in the Canadian canoe. It only held two comfortably, otherwise——But no one had volunteered to put its capacity to the test. Ella had gone in one of the punts with four or five of her guests; but the punt never overtook the canoe. It was those of the guests who had been in the punt that afterward said it was very funny to observe the chagrin of Queen Guinevere when she found that her Sir Lancelot had discovered an Elaine.
“You have had a delightful day, I’m sure,” said Ella. She had found him at the bottom of the garden just before dinner. It was not for her he was loitering there.
“Delightful? Perhaps. I shall know more about it ten years hence,” he replied.
“You are almost gruff as well as unintelligible,” said she.
“I beg your pardon,” he cried. “Pray forgive me, Ella.”
“I’ll forgive your gruffness if you make yourself intelligible,” said she. “You frighten me. Ten years hence? What has happened to-day?”
“Oh, nothing whatever has happened! and as for ten years hence—well, in ten years hence I shall be looking back to this day either as one of the happiest of my life, or as Francesca looked back upon her tempo felice.”
“Oh, now that you get into a foreign language you are quite intelligible. You have not spoken?”
“Spoken? I? To her—to her? I have not spoken. I don’t believe that I shall ever have the courage to speak to her in the sense you mean.”